Earlier today (yesterday in their part of the globe) the final General Assembly that I know of for this year convened. General Assembly 2012 of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand is meeting October 4-7 at the Rotorua Boys High School in Rotorua towards the middle of the North Island. (And in the middle of a volcanic caldera.)

The incoming Moderator, the Rev. Ray Coster, has chosen for the theme of GA12 “Reviving the Flame.” As is traditional, he has put together a four-part Bible study based on this theme for the whole church to participate in. In choosing this theme he writes:

I love the word revive. It speaks to me about God never giving up on God’s people. In some ways I feel as though our Presbyterian Church has been in a wilderness for many years. We are all now aware of our Church’s downward statistics. We have moved from a denomination of about 130,000 people at weekly worship in the early 1960s to around 30,000 today. It could be very easy to become despondent about this, give up and feel like we are failing. But the desert or wilderness is a place of meeting and restoration. That’s where revival, refreshment and restoration begin.

It appears that the White Book with a docket and reports is not available online but supplemental reports are posted. (Have to admit that I am a little uncertain here because the web site says they are “not for distribution and publication outside of our Church.”) However, for those interested in the multi-ethnic nature of the church in general the PCANZ is an interesting branch to pay attention to because they probably have the best integration of indigenous peoples into the structure and polity of the denomination. In particular, Discussion Paper 2: The self-understanding of a multi-ethnic Church looks interesting (I have only had a chance to briefly review it) and it contains comparisons to the Uniting Church of Australia, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the United Reformed Church.

During the Assembly the commissioners will be hearing from the Rev. Tim Keel of Jacob’s Well church in Kansas City. The information says that he will be speaking on “how we understand and embody the Gospel in our communities.”

That information, and more general background, can be found in the media pack.

If you are interested in following along relevant information and documents are being posted each day on pages linked to the General Assembly 2012 page. The only page there at the moment is for Thursday and it contains the order of worship for the opening worship service and the Moderator’s sermon, among other things. (Note: Many of the documents are in Word format so I am not directly linking to them but giving you the page with the link.)

The General Assembly 2012 page also has a widget where you can sign up for email updates from the Assembly. Finally, their is the Facebook Page but I have not seen anything fresh posted there yet.

There does not appear to be any live streaming but a small Twitter stream is present on the hashtag #GA2012. So far Margaret Mayman ( @mmayman ) and Jason Goroncy ( @jasongoroncy ) look to be the tweeps to follow. As always, I will update as appropriate.

So our prayers and best wishes for the deliberations and discernment of the commissioners at General Assembly 2012. May you have a great Assembly.